


What If: Necropolis

by SideQuestPublications



Series: DC Random [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Acrophobia, Fear of Heights, Gen, Panic Attacks, macguffin, necropolis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 11:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SideQuestPublications/pseuds/SideQuestPublications
Summary: A "what if" based on a remark Kendra makes in a chapter of Catalyst. The Legends visit a necropolis to find an artifact that might help in the fight against Savage, but a rocket launcher destroys Leonard's escape route, leaving him stranded on a pillar with no way down. Carter tries to rescue him, but Len's recently-developed fear of heights interferes. Takes place between the first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow season 1.





	1. Low Tech

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Carter is an ass to Len. (He gets better. In private. Until canon interferes.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What if"... my Flash Sideways fanfic was true canon?
> 
> Here is the start of a longer "what if" arc... because there is no way I'm posting the entire Necropolis segment into a single chapter. Which is why I've created a separate "story" for it.
> 
> This one is a "what if" for a variety of reasons:  
> One reason is timing. I have it taking place between the very first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow-after Aldus' death and before the stopover in Norway-though minus a bit of dialogue I plan to include at the end it could just as easily take place shortly after the arms sale in episode 2. Which is to say it ain't easy to include it _anywhere_ ; the first _three_ episodes tend to jump straight from one mission to another, with no time for me to really use Carter the way I need to for this story to work.  
>  Second would be in-canon scenes-you'll note that episode 1 ended with Rip (and presumably the rest of the crew) immediately strapping in after the comment about Gideon having already plotted a course, whereas the activity here in the relevant scene requires them to be on their feet and moving around a bit longer. (Which scene is one of only two times this story links to canon, but anyway.) A minor change, perhaps, only a little more significant than, say, making a character shrug in a fanfic when they did no such thing on screen, but a change nonetheless.  
> And third is the tie to my other fics-though some dialogue in Catalyst alludes to the events of Necropolis (which is the only reason I'm writing this segment _now_ instead of trying to complete my other fics-damn attention deficit muse), this segment specifically exists only within the continuity as the Flash Sideways ficlet Enemy of My Enemy (and to a lesser extent, Recruitment Drive). But like other such what ifs, and unlike other ficlets within that continuity, _it serves no real purpose_ to my series (though yet again, my ADD muse wants to make an allusion that makes me think of yet _more_ stories I could write), and is written mostly for my own curiosity; it's a story I probably would not have come up with had it not been for that allusion.  
>  I'd like to say fourth is Carter's behavior, but he was being an ass to the two criminals at the beginning anyway. I'm just not entirely sure if he'd be this bad this soon after agreeing to work with the team to end Savage.
> 
> All characters seen or mentioned copyright DC, CW, etc.  
> Kutath reference copyright CJ Cherryh (third book of the Faded Sun trilogy).

Ray made another adjustment to the Atom suit's wiring, and a shot hit the deck between the criminal pair.

Mick jumped. " _Watch_ it!" he snarled.

Leonard merely glanced down to examine the burn mark, and watched with mild curiosity as it vanished from his sight.

"Sorry!" Ray said quickly. "Sorry." He sighed. "What's the point of us even giving this a second thought? Rip has _already_ seen the future. He knows exactly what's in store for each of us. Might as well have stayed dead, 'cause the world doesn't need any of us." He glanced at Sara. "You're just a lost assassin." He transferred his gaze to the two thieves. " _You're_ just a pair of good-for-nothing criminals."

Mick glanced at him. "I can live with that," he said, and returned his attention to his own weapon.

Leonard had to agree with Mick. The professor had been right, after all; people didn't typically consider you a legend until _after_ you were dead. Making a mark on history held a certain appeal, and half the time his life had depended as much on his reputation as on his actual skills anyway.... But _choosing_ between the two? His survival and that of his crew came first, every time.

"Well, I can't," Ray replied. "Can't live with somebody putting a cap on my destiny. Spent my whole life working to be something greater... by becoming something smaller. Then some guy comes along and tells me that being the Atom is as insignificant as an actual _atom_."

Leonard resisted the urge to snort. As insignificant as the building blocks of the universe? He knew the scientist was referring to the size, but _honestly_....

"That's _not_ what he said," Sara pointed out. "Rip said that in _his_ future we're nobodies, but this mission is about _changing_ the future. I mean, if we have the power to change the world, don't you think we have the power to change our own fate?"

Leonard hated to admit it, but the assassin had a point. And though the mission could change their futures, it was about changing Rip's _past_. If they could change that, then maybe they _could_ fix their own. "For better or for worse," he replied.

"That's a very good point," Ray said.

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS—

"— _might have died peacefully, in his sleep_ ," Kendra was saying as the group returned to the main deck.

Leonard hesitated. _Aldus?_

Miss "I can't read minds" Gideon chimed a confirmation in the comm in his ear; Professor Boardman had died less than a minute ago, while the crew had been busy discussing their own fates.

"Don't torture yourself with recriminations," Rip said. "One of the great lessons of time travel is that many things cannot be changed. Time _wants_ to happen." He glanced away from the two demigods and transferred his gaze to the rest of the crew as they approached. "Chronos, even Vandal, won't be the only enemy we face. Very often it will be time itself."

"Whether it wants to happen or not," Ray announced, "we're gonna change time, erase Savage's future, and earn our rightful place in history."

"Dr. Palmer is correct," Martin agreed. "We may not be legends in _your_ time, Captain, but we are going to decide our own fates."

"I don't give a damn about being a legend," Carter added, "as long as we end Savage once and for all."

"I can get down with that," Jefferson said.

"And our malcontents?" Martin asked. He turned around to look at the criminal pair.

Mick shrugged. "I like killing people."

"We're in," Leonard said. "For now."

Rip smiled.

"So how do we find this guy?" Sara asked.

"Professor Boardman had a theory about that," Rip said. "I've already had Gideon plot a course."

"A course to where?" Jefferson asked.

"Here," Rip replied. He walked over to the main console and tapped a screen to display a map above it. "The Necropolis of Zawiyet. Not yet discovered in your era, and even in _their_ time," he nodded at Carter and Kendra, "I believe the place rarely saw living visitors. At least not on the surface where we need to be."

" _Living_ visitors?" Ray echoed. "What exactly is a necropolis?"

Rip and Carter both opened their mouths to answer, but Leonard beat them to it. "A graveyard," he replied. He paced over to the display to examine the desert region more closely. "An entire city of the dead, so to speak."

"Close enough," Rip said. "There is an artifact located in the heart of the necropolis that may help us in the fight against Savage."

"We're grave-robbing, now?" Sara asked.

"Why not?" Carter grumbled. "We got a couple of criminals on board, they should feel right at home."

"Seriously, Carter?" Kendra whispered. "You can't even last five minutes without antagonizing the team that you _just_ agreed to work with?"

"You know, I always wanted to visit Kutath—" Leonard drawled.

"Which won't be published for another four years," Rip muttered.

Leonard ignored him. "—but I _ain't_ no grave-robber," he finished.

"Of course, how could I forget?" Carter scoffed. "Why _would_ you want to rob the dead? I mean, it's not like you can hurt them; so much more satisfying to go after the living, right?"

"Knock it off!" Kendra repeated.

"Something you want to say to us, chicken wing?" Mick growled. He stepped right up to the demigod and glared.

Carter glared right back. He snapped his wings out wide, crowding most of the team off of the bridge and forcing Leonard to jump back before the thief could receive a mouthful of feathers and a broken jaw.

But Mick refused to back down.

"Seems your friend might be smart enough not to cause trouble that he can't get himself out of," Carter replied. He smirked at Leonard before returning his glare to the arsonist. " _You_ , I'm not so sure about."

"Oh, for the love of..." Kendra muttered. "Carter, _enough_!'

"Right," Martin said. "Because of course the _criminal_ is the one who started this. God forbid that we hold anyone else responsible for the fallout."

"Oh, good lord," Rip muttered. "I'm sure we would all like to finish this with a minimum of, erm, obstructions, so if you could all please strap in so we can be on our way?"

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS—

Traveling through physical space, as it turned out, took a little longer than traveling through time. The trip lasted at least half an hour, during which time Mick continued to glare at Carter, Carter glared at Leonard, and Leonard pretended that he didn't notice either one.

"Ah, finally!" Rip called out. He set the Waverider down outside of the edge of the canyon.

"Why'd you park so far away?" Sara asked. "Didn't you say this artifact was in the _heart_ of the necropolis?"

"Unfortunately the canyon walls provide a natural dampening effect," Rip explained. "No technology above certain, er, primitive standards will be able to function." He smirked. "Incidentally, that is how the artifact came to be there; a time pirate had landed his ship within the necropolis a few millennia ago and was unable to fly it back out again."

"Slings and arrows, is it?" Leonard asked.

"Maces and staves work just fine," Carter said. "I guess you won't be grave-robbing, after all. Too bad."

"Uh, you do realize that means that Firestorm and I are out, too, right?" Ray asked.

"The firearms of this era will suffice," Rip said. "They're purely mechanical. It's the computerized weapons, such as the cold and heat guns, that won't work. But Dr. Palmer is correct, and I'll need some of you to remain behind in case of unwanted visitors. For this mission I would like Ms. Lance, Mr. Snart, Mr. Rory, and...." He sighed. "Mr. Hall, thanks to your earlier display I would very much prefer for you to remain behind with the others. It is _only_ because your memories of your former lives are stronger than are Ms. Saunders' that I ask you to join us, but I must insist that you refrain from threatening your teammates here on out."

Carter glanced at the two criminals and then turned to face Rip. "No need. I think they got the message."

"Fine," Rip groaned. "If all of you would come with me?"

Leonard hesitated to turn his back on Carter, but Mick and Sara fell into step behind the thief and the four followed the captain down the corridor.

Leonard's back twitched the whole way.

"My personal armory," Rip announced. The door slid open, and Leonard went straight for a display case on the other side of the room. "Here you'll find a variety of weapons organized according to period and region and of _course_ you've already been in here and know exactly what to look for."

"Did you expect anything less?" Leonard drawled.

"Yes," Rip admitted, "but hell if I know _why_." He shook his head. "These weapons," he said, pointing out a variety of guns, "are suitable for close-quarters fighting, though I'm sure some of you already knew _that_ as well. They pack a hell of a punch for their size, but at the cost that they lack the precision needed to use them over a distance. _This_ one, however...." He retrieved a rifle and scope that looked more futuristic than the rest of the offerings. "Mr. Snart, Ms. Lance, your records show both of you to be exceptional marksman, but Ms. Lance is the superior in hand-to-hand combat. That being the case, I would prefer that Mr. Snart take this one."

"You got no arguments there," Sara replied. She walked to another display case and caressed the recurve bow resting inside. "But I think I'll borrow this one, just in case."

Rip nodded. "Mr. Snart, I had this rifle custom-made for just the sort of situation we face now; it can hold and fire more rounds than anything native to the era, and is designed specifically for sniping, but it is low-tech enough to function within dampening fields such as the canyon produces."

The captain held out the rifle, then snatched it back when Leonard reached out to touch it.

"I _trust_..." Rip said, "that I need not remind you of the consequences of losing this gun in this era?"

"I would never risk losing something so valuable," Leonard breathed.

"No, I suppose you wouldn't." Rip nodded and handed him the gun. "You'll find the ammunition you need down below. Mr. Hall?"

"I don't need anything but my mace," Carter replied.

Rip shrugged. "I expect you would know that better than anyone."

Once they had the supplies they needed, they rejoined the team on the bridge.

"I feel like Rambo," Mick said. The arsonist had chosen to fill his pockets with as many bullets as he could carry without losing his pants, and he had three pistols sticking out of his waistband identical to the one in his hand. "Almost worth leaving the heat gun behind."

"Rambo dual-wielded _machine guns_ ," Leonard pointed out. "You don't look a thing like him." He had opted for mobility over power; his own pistol, brought from their home era, rested in a brand-new holster on his hip with several clips in easy reach. Ammunition for the rifle filled his other pocket.

The rifle itself he cradled in his arms.

Sara quirked an eyebrow at the way he carried the gun. "You gonna shoot with that thing or sing it a lullaby?" she asked.

"Don't encourage him," Mick told her in a stage whisper. "You ought to see how he is with his _loot_."

Sara's other eyebrow lifted to join the first. "Oh, _please_ tell me you have pictures!"

Mick only grinned.

"True art is made to be admired," Leonard replied without the slightest bit of shame.

"Who are we fighting, anyway?" Sara asked. "You said this place doesn't get many 'living' visitors; is it full of zombies or something?"

Martin made a choking sound.

"No one, if we are very lucky," Rip replied. "But there is a warlord who has made his home in the area and he will not take too kindly if he catches us lurking about. Now...." He returned to the central console and pulled up a 3-dimensional map of the necropolis. "Mr. Hall, if you could join me?"

Carter stepped forward to examine the map. "If we want to get to the heart of the necropolis, we'll need to go through here," he said. He traced a winding route that hugged the edge of the canyon. "It's not the most direct route but it will give us the most protection from ambush. You, me, and the arsonist will have to stay near to the ground in case we _do_ end up in a fight."

"The arsonist _has_ a name," Mick grumbled.

"I rather assumed that would be the case," Rip said. "I think if Ms. Lance and Mr. Snart were to climb up here—" he pointed at the solid wall to the right of the indicated route, "they would have ample opportunity to scout ahead for enemies, and still be in easy reach if they needed to join the fray at closer range."

"Sounds good to me," Sara replied.

Carter nodded. "Sara, yes. But I think we'd be better off with the thief over here." He poked a finger onto the other side, where the wall was broken in places.

Leonard's eyes widened.

"That way we got someone scouting both sides," Carter said. "And he'll be in a better position to put that rifle to good use if he needs it. Problem is, at that height he'd be on his own if anything goes wrong." He turned to smirk at Leonard. "Think you can handle that?"

"How, uh.... _how_ high up is that?" Leonard asked.

Carter's smirk vanished.

"The walls are approximately seventy-five feet high at their lowest point on that side of the canyon," Gideon replied.

Leonard tried to swallow in a mouth that had gone dry.

"Seventy-five?" Mick echoed. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"It—it's fine," Leonard made himself say. He poked two fingers at the display and zoomed in to reveal that the "wall" was nothing more than a series of pillars and narrow ledges joined together by natural bridges. "Look, that path runs parallel to the one you and Rip would be taking," he continued before he lost his nerve. "I'll be able to keep a close eye on your group _and_ stay in contact with Sara from there. And it looks like I can climb down at any point if I need to."

"If you're sure...." Mick said.

"I said it's _fine_!"

Rip looked back and forth between the two criminals. "Uh, _right_ ," he said. "Now that that's settled, what say we get moving?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note, I have no idea if Zawiyet has a necropolis, which is kinda the reason I picked it. I wanted one that _wouldn't_ be some big well-known thing in history, and since I found no mention of a necropolis there, that worked with Rip's comment about it not yet being discovered in the team's era and rarely seeing living visitors even thousands of years ago.
> 
> Linked fics:  
> Flash Sideways, specifically the Enemy of My Enemy ficlet as it pertains to Len's recently-developed fear of heights that he is trying desperately to hide from the team.  
> Catalyst, as Kendra alludes to the trip to the necropolis in a later chapter.


	2. Recon Mission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which something goes wrong, Len is on his own, and Carter realizes he'd taken things too far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we continue the Necropolis arc, in which the team attempted one mission between the first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow-after Aldus' death and before the stopover in Norway. It is a "what if" scenario primarily based on the timing, as the show doesn't really offer any time between in-canon missions for this event to occur.
> 
> All characters seen or mentioned copyright DC, CW, etc.

Leonard gritted his teeth and kept moving. Carter had flown up to him a few times to comment on his progress, but the thief had kept his mouth firmly shut.

Decades of surviving under Lewis' control had told him _exactly_ what the demigod had been doing. Carter had almost certainly wanted to provoke him, to force him or Mick to start a fight, ready to claim—and rightly so—that he'd only been defending himself if either of them retaliated; _frightening_ the thief might have been a bonus but it had never been the man's intent.

And that alone was reason enough to ignore him. Why give Carter that satisfaction when Leonard could claim that he was simply trying to concentrate on the climb?

And the fact was, Leonard _did_ need to concentrate. The ledges were considerably wider than the map had led him to believe, but so were the gaps separating them, and many of the bridges threatened to crumble under his feet. Seven times he'd had to signal to Sara, so that she could ask the group to wait while he backtracked to find another way across. He couldn't afford to let anything distract him from the climb.

Only a year ago, he would've scoffed at the gaps and jumped them easily. Today, the delay added well over an hour to a trip that should've lasted only half that.

Thankfully they reached the heart without encountering any locals in all that time. Because the next pillar ended in a sheer drop.

Leonard crawled as near to the edge as he dared and watched the other three men spread out to search the area. He glanced at them through the scope, but they faced the wrong way and he couldn't read their lips at that angle.

At least Mick seemed to be ignoring Carter now. The arsonist had had enough of Lewis' abuses, and should have easily recognized the demigod's game for what it was; with Leonard theoretically out of harm's way there was simply no reason to give the man the fight he wanted.

Leonard sighed and set the rifle down. The scope's magnification was superior to anything he'd used in his own time, but there was nothing happening down below that required the view. And while he could maintain his peripheral vision by keeping both eyes open, he wasn't used to doing it with a scope and would need more practice to better interpret the conflicting signals.

Movement flickered off to his left. He turned his head to watch, but he couldn't see anything out of place.

He looked to the right. Sara continued to split her attention between Leonard and the three men below, but she wasn't giving him any kind of signal.

Another heat haze, then. They'd kept flickering in and out of his vision along the entire route.

Movement flickered again.

Leonard peered through the scope to find, not a shimmer of air or a cloud of dust, but another figure creeping towards the three men. He glanced again to the right, but Sara hadn't reacted to the figure's presence.

The thief frowned.

The figure turned, nearly fading into the background, and Leonard finally understood. The camouflage was designed to fool anyone that low to the ground; even Sara with her League training would be hard-pressed to spot the figure, but doubtless the locals had never expected an outsider to watch them from high up.

The rifle was quiet with barely any recoil; only when the figure's sword fell, mere inches from striking Carter down, was Leonard certain that he'd even pulled the trigger. The thief looked through the scope again in time to see his crew turn and stare as the dead man toppled over.

Carter looked up to Leonard's perch on top of the pillar and gave a slight nod.

There was no time for more. The battle had begun.

The three men below searched the area for more attackers. Leonard brought down two more hiding in the shadows before his crew caught on and retreated to the center of the valley.

The locals crept around the edge, watching for an opening. Four rushed forwards; Sara picked two off with the bow the moment they left cover, Mick shot down a third, and Carter laid out the forth with two blows of the mace.

A fifth crept into position to take advantage of the team's distraction. Leonard shot him before he could make up his mind to attack.

 _Where are they all coming from?_ Leonard's eyes darted around as he sought out a likely hiding place for so large a group. But with their camouflage, and with Leonard's perch so high up, they could easily have hidden merely by sticking close the walls. All it had taken was his own refusal to look down and pay attention to those flickers of movement.

 _Dammit, I should've been_ watching _! That's the only reason I'm up here...._

But no amount of guilt would fix things now. He'd allowed his fear to control him once again, and now it was his job to make sure his crew didn't pay the price for his mistake.

The enemy rushed the team in greater numbers now. Sara and Leonard, far from the battle, had to choose their targets with more care than the three on the ground. Sara waited until the enemy threatened to overwhelm the team before releasing another arrow, while Leonard focused on those shooting from under cover, and otherwise picked his targets at random in an attempt to confuse them.

But for all their care, it would only be a matter of time before they'd have to change tactics. Five minutes into the fight, Sara had run out of arrows and leaped down to the ground, with a controlled tumble that made Leonard flinch, and immediately laid into the nearest foe with a flurry of staff and dagger.

And though they could not see him at that angle, several of the enemy had begun to shoot in Leonard's general direction. With every shot he took, theirs grew in accuracy, until a single bullet chipped the stone only five inches from his face. And he didn't have enough room on the pillar to change position and still keep the fight in view.

_Click!_

"Dammit," he muttered. Leonard pulled away from the edge and swapped out for a fresh clip. In this sense, at least, the rifle was no different from the guns he'd handled from his own era; the job was quick, almost mindlessly easy from long years of practice, and he sidled back to the edge and peered through the scope again, looking for a new target.

Instead he stared down the shaft of a rocket launcher aimed at the pillar.

" _Shit!_ "

Carter crushed the launcher beneath his mace, but the demigod had struck too late; all the blow accomplished was to alter the rocket's path.

Leonard scrambled backwards, putting as much distance between himself and the edge of the pillar as he could, ducked back down to put his center of gravity as low as humanly possible, and threw his arms over his head for whatever scant protection the gesture offered.

The explosion robbed him of all of his senses. Touch returned all too soon, as he could feel the sting of debris begin to rain down on his overheated skin. All he could hear, though, was a high-pitched tone, which might have been another rocket but he was fairly certain was his own ears ringing. And his vision swam oddly; the next ledge was hazy but visible through the cloud of dust, but try as he might he couldn't make out the bridge a bare five feet from his position.

_Wait._

Leonard pushed himself to his feet, nearly lost his balance, and gingerly made his way to where the bridge connected this pillar to the next ledge over.

Or rather, where the bridge _used to_ connect the two. In its place was a smoking ruin where the rocket had hit.

" _No_...." A moan escaped from his throat.

_In through the nose... hold for a count of three... out through the mouth._

He eyed the gap.... but it was much too far; he'd never be able to jump that distance, even without his fear interfering.

Could he climb down, then? The map had shown a rough surface on this side of the canyon, plenty of handholds, but he'd be vulnerable to attack until he reached the bottom. And that assumed the rocket hadn't done any damage that he _couldn't_ see from his position.

_In... hold... three... out...._

He dropped his gaze to the ground far below. Fear threatened to choke him. He backed away from the edge, and turned to face the battle once again.

A man, dressed in camouflage of a richer material than those fighting below, hauled himself onto the pillar near Leonard's abandoned perch.

Leonard snatched the pistol out of his holster, but he was still dizzy from the explosion and couldn't aim properly. He hit his foe once in the chest, drawing sparks from whatever armor the man wore, while the rest of his shots went wide.

He grabbed for another clip, but before he could reload the warlord snatched up the rifle and pulled the trigger.

The impact felt the way Leonard imagined a mule kicking him in the chest might feel. He collapsed to the ground, wheezing as he fought to recover the air that had been driven out of him.

But when he could finally breathe, it was without additional pain. That, even before he noticed the burn high in his right shoulder and a warm trickle down his arm, suggested that at least the first bullet hadn't hit a lung.

The respite, such that it was, was only temporary. He tried to move his right arm, and his vision turned grey as the motion seared its way through his entire body. Moving his left, pressing one hand against the wound to stem the flow of blood, was only a little easier and left him gasping and shaking.

Moving was—technically—possible, then. If he'd been alone, he might be able to fight the pain enough to bind the wound and wait for a rescue.

Assuming that the bullet hadn't smashed through bone. Assuming that he didn't die from internal bleeding first. Assuming that he wasn't already in shock and just didn't realize how much damage he'd suffered already, how much more he'd cause by trying to move.

But defending himself was impossible. His continued survival would last only until the warlord stopped examining the rifle and realized that the first bullet hadn't killed him.

Because the second bullet couldn't fail.

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS— 

The crew down below bunched together in the middle of the valley. Every few minutes one of the foe would come within striking distance; Sara or Carter would dart after them, leaving Mick and Rip to cover their attack, and then rejoin their team seconds later before the enemy could split them apart.

The enemy used the same tactics, and they had far more guns.

"I don't like this," Mick growled. He glanced up to the pillar where Leonard had been laying down cover fire until recently. "Where _is_ he?"

"Could've been hurt when the rocket hit," Sara replied. "We've got to get up there."

 _Problem is, at that height he'd be on his own if anything goes wrong._ Carter grimaced at the memory of his taunt. _I should've been the one to keep watch up there. It'll be_ my _fault if anything happened to him._

Rip nodded. "How fast can you climb?"

Sara opened her mouth to reply.

"Not as fast as I can fly," Carter said. "And I'll have more room to dodge; I'll get to him easier than you will."

"Now I _really_ don't like this," Mick added.

"Too bad," Carter muttered. "I'll signal if I need help." He snapped his wings open and leaped into the air, ignoring the shouts of protest from his team.

The pillar was high enough to give any of them trouble. Attempting the climb would have left Sara exposed to enemy fire for far too long, and Carter didn't believe the other two men put together had half of her skill. Even flying circles to avoid getting shot took longer than the demigod liked, and the continued silence from above worried him.

He flew through the remains of what had recently been a bridge and choked on a cloud of dust.

"No good," he rasped. He thought he heard someone else speaking, but it was too low to make out and he couldn't see through the dust.

Carter smirked. _That_ he could take care of. He flew in a tight circle, angling himself to send a gust of wind at the pillar with every beat of his wings.

But when the dust faded, so did his smirk. Leonard was huddled on the ground, and he was no longer alone on the pillar.

The other man, dressed in the same camouflage as the fighters below but with more elaborate armor, held up one arm to shield his eyes from the dust storm Carter had created; with the other hand, he aimed Rip's custom rifle at the thief.

Blood pooled beneath Leonard's body. Only the ragged movement of his chest showed he still lived, but for how much longer?

 _No...._ Carter gripped his mace and glared down at them. "Get away from him!" he snarled, and dove.

The warlord jerked the rifle up to aim at Carter.

The demigod titled his wings to change his angle of attack and slammed into the enemy from behind. He titled his wings the other way, and used the momentum from his dive to throw the man over the edge.

Carter waited only a few seconds longer, and watched Mick shoot the warlord point blank, before he returned his attention to the injured thief.

Leonard was already pushing himself upright.

"Thank the gods," Carter breathed.

But his relief was short-lived. Leonard had struggled to his knees and braced one foot on the ground, all while holding his injured right shoulder to keep it as still as humanly possible, when his eyes glazed over and his entire body went limp.

Carter caught him before he could fall. Leonard flinched at the touch, but his strength was too far gone to resist.

"Easy," Carter murmured. "Easy, I got you. You're going to be okay."

The thief's skin was cold to the touch, and the site of his wound felt like ice. A quick probe of the area drew a noise of protest from his throat but revealed no sign of an exit wound.

After 206 deaths, Carter was confident that that was _not_ a good sign.

And there was so much blood on the ground already.

"How are you even conscious?" the demigod murmured.

Guilt welled up in him as he realized just how badly he'd misjudged the thief. When he'd returned home after Rip's initial invitation, the first thing he'd done was look into his potential teammates... which had meant speaking to the Flash's team about the criminal pair. In this era, when children had so much power that merely spanking them for some transgression was often considered abusive, and yet they still blamed their parents for those very transgressions, he'd been ashamed to realize just how easy it had been to dismiss Barry's description of the elder Snart as an exaggeration.

Yet that shame had not stopped Carter from focusing entirely on the younger Snart's own crimes.

But watching how Leonard had moved, the specific way he'd positioned himself to stand without using either arm, the relative ease with which he'd done so as though he'd rehearsed that exact stance many times over the years.... That was _not_ a maneuver he'd learned as an adult. The trauma of his childhood could never excuse the choices he'd made, but it went a long way towards explaining why he thought they were worth making.

"Come on," Carter said. "I need to get you back to the Waverider."

Leonard shuddered. "B-bridge 's gone," he stammered. "C-can't jump it. Too f-far." He panted as though the effort to speak had exhausted him.

Maybe it had.

Carter rolled his eyes. "I'm going to _fly_ you back."

Leonard whimpered and tried to pull free of Carter's arms. "You can't," he said, his voice broken by what almost sounded like a sob.

"Hey, _easy_ ," Carter said again. "It's fine. I've had years of practice. Thousands of years, remember? I'll be in complete control the whole time. I promise, I won't let anything happen to you."

Leonard shook his head. "No, you _can't_. You can't take me into the air. You just... you can't!" He shook harder and tried to jerk away from the demigod.

Carter gritted his teeth and slowly relaxed his grip until he was sure the thief wasn't going to hurt himself. _Damn control freak_. Not that he would blame Leonard, after what Barry had told him.

But he needed Leonard to calm down if there was to be any hope of rescue. There was little enough chance he could avoid causing greater injury, even with the man's cooperation; no chance at all, without it.

And there was no time to be gentle, to persuade the thief to trust him. "You don't understand," the demigod murmured. "You need medical treatment. But the Waverider cannot come here. Rip said higher tech doesn't work within the canyon; nobody else can come to your rescue." He _hated_ having to use fear to get the right reaction, but if Lewis had taught him to respond to it.... "Snart, you are _going to die_ if you don't let me help you."

"No, _you_ don't understand," Leonard said. "If you get me in the air.... I won't be able to stop myself from panicking. If you lose control because of me, we're _both_ dead."

Carter's mouth dropped open. He doubted Leonard would have allowed that kind of admission if he wasn't already panicking, but _how_ could he assume that flying would be any worse than his present situation?

He mentally reviewed the last couple of hours, Leonard's reaction to learning his role in this mission, _Mick's_ concern over the height....

 _Shit_. The clues had been right in front of him and Carter had ignored every last one.

The demigod sighed. "I can think of one way to maintain control," he said. "But I don't think you're going to like it." He removed one arm from around the thief and picked up the mace.

Leonard whimpered again. "Just make it quick."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I debated on whether to start separating chapters according to whose POV the scene is told in, but as the first section is told in Len's perspective (which would place it squarely in chapter 1) and involves a time-and-place skip, I elected to just focus on the "what's going on" method of division.
> 
> Linked fics:  
> Flash Sideways, specifically the Enemy of My Enemy ficlet as it pertains to Len's recently-developed fear of heights.  
> Catalyst, as Kendra alludes to the trip to the necropolis in a later chapter.


	3. Rescue Operation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the warlord is dispatched, Sara comes to the wrong conclusion (or the right conclusion for the wrong reason), and Carter is the only one who can save Len's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we continue the Necropolis arc, in which the team attempted one mission between the first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow--after Aldus' death and before the stopover in Norway. It is a "what if" scenario primarily based on the timing, as the show doesn't really offer any time between in-canon missions for this event to occur.
> 
> A note on translations: in the main Flash Sideways fic, I had announced at the end of one chapter that I intended to run some of the dialogue through Google Translate (because one of the scenes had Cisco and Dante conversing in Spanish and being surprised that Len understood them) and post the relevant chapter, and then make edits as needed if and when someone came along to provide corrections. That did not happen as planned... because someone offered to provide those corrections before I'd even finished the chapter so that I could be sure it was translated correctly before posting.  
> Such is not the case here. I ran a handful of phrases through Google translate (because this fic has Carter speaking Arabic a couple of times, once here and at least once towards the end of the fic) and added the translations to the story immediately. In this case, it _does not matter_ if the translation is a little off--it actually works better for the plot if the translation is not entirely accurate--purely because of linguistic drift; just as there is a very real possibility that Carter picked up the language during one or more of his incarnations, there is the equally real possibility that he hadn't spoken it in a few centuries and there are bound to be a few changes along the way.  
>  I also noticed that for some reason, Google translate is willing to translate in one direction (English to Arabic) but will not translate back. Weird, and I can only guess at the reason.
> 
> All characters seen/mentioned copyright DC, CW, etc.

"He better get back down here soon," Sara muttered. "I don't know about you guys, but I can't keep this up for much longer."

Rip shook his head. "I don't think we can keep this up for long even _with_ Mr. Hall's aid," he admitted. "The good news is, this lot has some peculiar ideas about leadership. They won't attack if there's nobody in charge."

"We take out the warlord, we win?" Mick asked. "What's the bad news?"

"The warlord will only attack if he sees a chance to take out whomever he believes to be _our_ leader," Rip said. "But he'll be staying out of the thick of things as long as possible."

Sara groaned. "And since Leonard is the only one who isn't 'in the thick of things,' the warlord's probably going to target _him_."

Rip nodded. "That would be my theory, as well."

"Then we gotta find this guy," Mick said.

"Any ideas?" Sara asked.

A body flew off the pillar and crumpled on the ground in front of Mick.

"Found him," the arsonist said before he unloaded a full clip into the warlord's unprotected skull.

"Well, _that_ was anticlimactic," Rip muttered.

Sara and Mick watched the enemy vanish back into the canyon.

"Where are they going?" Mick asked.

"To decide on a new leader," Rip said. "Many unburied corpses were discovered in the necropolis when it was uncovered in my time. I expect now we know the reason." He glanced back up the pillar. "Ms. Lance?"

"Like you even need to ask," Sara replied.

With no more enemy fire to dodge, the climb up the pillar was almost easy, but the assassin was unnerved by the continued silence. Hundreds of possibilities flickered through her mind, each worse than the last.

Not one of those possibilities included Carter, mace in hand, standing over Leonard's crumpled body.

"Get away from him!" she snarled. She reached back for her quiver.... _Dammit_. She launched herself at the demigod, staff in one hand and dagger in the other.

Carter dodged easily and took to the air, out of reach of anything but the daggers she wasn't willing to throw.

Yet.

Sara laid down her weapons and crouched to examine the thief. "What the hell did you do to him?"

"I, uh, I think he might've been dazed when the rocket hit," Carter replied. "Looks like the warlord got a decent shot in before I got here."

" _Bullshit_ ," Sara growled. The wound on Leonard's shoulder looked like it had come from a bullet, true, but the marks on the back of his head had come from a _spiked_ weapon. The fact that his skull hadn't been caved in was nothing short of a miracle, but Carter's mace didn't ever seem to do the damage she'd expect from a weapon of its type.

She set to work cutting Leonard's sleeve free, both to give her easier access to the injured shoulder and to use the material to wrap his wound. The blow to the back of his head was another problem entirely; it wasn't bleeding much—unusual enough for a head injury, even without taking its source into account—and was easily bandaged with the other sleeve, though she had no way to check for internal damage until she returned him to the Waverider.

But getting him there would be a challenge all on its own. She could climb back down with him if necessary, but he'd lost too much blood already; even with her training there was a good chance he'd die before she could get help.

Carter landed, putting himself back in easy reach of the assassin. He dropped the mace and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "He needs medical treatment," he said. " _Now_. I can get him back to the Waverider faster than anyone. But you need to trust me to help him... or do you really believe that letting him die is the better choice?"

"You better hope that Gideon can heal head injuries," Sara said. She gestured with her dagger at the back of Leonard's head. "Because if whatever you've done to him is permanent, then I'm going to find out if you can still reincarnate after the League is through with you."

"Hayati lak liltakhalus minha," the demigod muttered in Arabic.

_My life is yours to dispose of._

Sara gave a start. Carter's grammar was off, as she might expect from someone who hadn't spoken the language in a few centuries and wasn't aware of how much it had changed... but he'd spoken with the confidence of one who nonetheless knew _exactly_ what he'd said.

She wasn't surprised that he would have picked up the language during one of his incarnations. No, what had shocked her was that what he'd said was the ritual response—or near enough, allowing for linguistic drift—for when a member of the League failed a mission and was prepared to accept their punishment without so much as a trial by combat.

The demigod shrugged. "You're a time traveler now," he continued in English. "If he doesn't recover, you can kill me as many times as it takes. I wouldn't recommend it, though. No telling what you might change if you're not careful."

Sara frowned. "And what, exactly, do you think you're going to do?"

"I need to carry him." Carter spread his wings wide. "If you could help me get him on my back...."

"I don't have a choice, do I?" she asked.

"The real question is, does he?" he replied.

Sara shook her head. She didn't want to admit it, but Carter was right; with his wings, he was the only one who stood a chance of getting Leonard to the Waverider in time. The two of them wrestled the thief over the demigod's shoulders in a workable position, head and shoulders on Carter's left and legs on his right, with as little jostling as they could manage.

"Can you fly like that?" Sara asked.

Carter reached up his left hand to hold Leonard's injured shoulder still; he wrapped his right arm around the thief's legs and stretched to reach the comm in his own ear. Finally he beat his wings to lift himself a few inches into the air. "It'll have to do," he muttered as he drifted back to the ground.

The fireman's carry looked as awkward as hell on his wings, and Sara doubted he'd be able to dodge enemy fire that way. But it was the only safe carry—relatively speaking—that didn't require Leonard to be conscious enough to hold on, and at least the demigod _could_ move his wings enough to fly.

"Once he's settled in the Med Bay," Carter said, "I'll come right back to help with this other mess."

"No need," Sara replied. "Once you took out the warlord, the rest of them retreated."

"Huh."

"Just focus on getting him healed, all right?" Sara glanced back down to where the other two men continued their search. "I'll tell the others.... I'll tell them something."

Carter nodded and leapt off the pillar, turning the momentum of his dive into a steady glide until the additional weight forced him to beat his wings to stay aloft.

Sara waited until he was out of sight before she reclaimed the rifle and climbed down to join the other two.

Mick was off testing the canyon walls for openings, while Rip knelt to examine the warlord's armor.

"Is he... able to join us?" Rip asked quietly.

Mick paused in his search. The way he'd positioned himself, Sara knew he was trying to eavesdrop.

She shook her head. "He must've been stunned when the rocket hit," she replied. "Looks like our friend here managed to get the drop on him."

Rip grimaced.

"Carter took him back to Med Bay to see what Gideon can do for him," Sara finished. She wanted to tell them, to tell _Mick_ , the truth—if anyone deserved revenge it was Leonard or his partner—but no... Leonard's well-being had to come first. There would be time enough to be pissed off at Carter _after_ the thief had a chance to recover.

Besides, if Sara had interpreted those marks correctly, Carter wouldn't be able to hide his guilt from Gideon. They would all find out whatever had really happened soon enough.

"How goes the search?" Sara asked. "Any luck finding your artifact?"

"I'm afraid so," Rip said.

Sara quirked an eyebrow at the captain.

Rip gestured at the pieces he'd taken from the warlord's armor. "Our 'friend' here was able to take charge because he'd located the artifact, and incorporated its power into his armor. Much as Dr. Palmer powers his Atom suit with dwarf star alloy. It would appear that one of Mr. Snart's bullets damaged the artifact, and Mr. Hall finished the job when he struck the warlord down."

"And Leonard would never have been hurt if we hadn't been searching for that thing," Sara muttered. "Damn."

"Are you saying it's my fault he was injured?" Rip asked. "Not that I'm inclined to disagree, mind. I just like to know when I'm being blamed _before_ people start hitting me."

"I'm not sure what I'm saying," Sara admitted.

Mick abandoned all pretenses of searching and walked up behind Rip. "Not your fault," he said.

Rip jumped.

"This is about what Savage has done, right? " Mick continued. "And what he's gonna do. So that makes it his fault, not yours. For now, anyway." He nodded down at the fragments Rip had torn free. "And Len would probably call it a waste, getting hurt over this with nothing to show for it."

"There's no way to salvage it?" Sara asked.

"No," Rip said. He eyed the canyon walls near where they'd last seen the enemy. "We'd better head back. I don't know how long they'll be, and I would prefer to be on the Waverider before they make up their minds."

Sara and Mick exchanged glances. "Get well present?" Sara asked.

Mick shrugged and began scooping up fragments of the artifact. "Works for me."

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS—

Carter tapped the comm in his ear again.

"Come on, I've _got_ be close enough by now," he growled.

But there was nothing. Not even static.

A few hard wingbeats took him high above the canyon, and he could easily see the Waverider parked only 300 feet away.

The comm flickered to life.

" _—ter?_ " Ray's voice said. " _Ev—kay?_ "

"Get the Med Bay ready," Carter replied. "Then get out of my way. Snart's been injured. I'm flying him there as fast as I can."

There was another crackle, and then nothing.

"Did you hear me?" Carter asked. "Get the Med Bay ready! Raymond? Gideon? _Anyone_?"

But only silence followed.

"Damn it!"

Sticky warmth trickled down his left hand.

Carter titled his head to examine the thief's wounds as best as the angle allowed. The blow to the back of Leonard's head didn't appear to have changed any, but the blood from his shoulder had soaked through the bandage and was running down the demigod's arm.

Leonard groaned. His eyes fluttered open, then slipped shut again. His skin had lost nearly all color... from pain, fear, blood loss, Carter couldn't be sure. Maybe all three.

"We're almost there," the demigod murmured. "You just need to hold on a little longer."

He tilted his wings and dove straight for the Waverider.

250 feet.

200.

150.

" _Open up_ ," he muttered, though he was going much too fast now for the comm to catch his words.

100.

50.

The cargo bay was open. Carter flared his wings to slow himself, tightened his grip to pull Leonard in closer, and ducked inside, skidding to a stop seconds before he reached the far wall.

Then he launched himself down the corridor, ignored the shock on Martin and Jefferson's faces as he swept past them. He didn't slow down again until he reached the Med Bay.

Ray and Kendra waited inside. Carter crouched to put Leonard in their reach, and together they pulled the injured thief down and laid him out on the bed.

"Attach the cuff to his left wrist," Gideon ordered, "and I'll begin transfusion."

Ray wrapped the cuff he found around Leonard's wrist as instructed.

Within seconds, color returned to the thief's face. But too little, too slow. Much too slow.

Carter's eyes were drawn back to the soggy material wrapped around Leonard's shoulder and the blood that dripped to the floor in time to the thief's wheezing.

"Mr. Hall, if you could lift his head for a moment...?" Gideon said.

Carter lifted as he was asked, careful not to place any additional pressure on the spot where he'd hit the thief. He watched the top of the bed reshape itself to support Leonard's head in a similar manner.

"That will be sufficient, thank you," Gideon said. "You can lay him back down now."

Carter gently laid the thief's head back to the bed.

Despite the demigod's care, Leonard whimpered at the change.

"What happened to him?" Jefferson asked.

"The warlord didn't take too kindly to catching us lurking about," Carter replied.

"What about the rest of the team?" Kendra asked. "Did they—"

Carter shook his head. "They're fine," he said, belatedly realizing the gesture could be misinterpreted. "Sorry, I guess I wasn't thinking about what you were asking. But they're fine. When we took out the warlord, his army retreated. But Snart.... Logically he should've been safer than any of us, but he was shot before we realized that he was in danger."

_Problem is, at that height he'd be on his own if anything goes wrong._

"Are _you_ okay?" Ray asked. "Your arm...."

Carter stared at his left arm without really seeing the blood that now coated it up to his elbow. "It's all his," he mumbled.

"Oh, god," the scientist muttered.

"Is it just me," Martin said, "or is this taking too long? My apologies, Gideon, I don't know how fast twenty-second century medical technology normally works, but the rate at which he's losing blood...."

"Agreed," Gideon said. "I am attempting to repair the damage, but merely replenishing his fluids at a sufficient rate is taxing most of my resources. I'll need to put him into stasis, so if you could all please step back... and try not to be alarmed."

"Okay, I don't want to be _that_ guy," Jefferson said, "but why exactly would we be alarmed? More than we are already, I mean."

Blue light shined down from above the bed and rippled across Leonard's body. The bleeding stopped as the thief went silent and completely still.

"Oh," Jefferson breathed. "I guess that's why."

"If I might hazard a guess," Martin said. "When Gideon said she was putting him into stasis, she was—obviously—referring to a state of suspended animation. A way to reduce his need for a steady supply of blood and oxygen, to give herself time to repair the damage. Perhaps reducing that need requires slowing down _all_ of his biological functions sufficiently that he appears to, uh... to be.... Well, that he appears to be...."

"Appears to be.... not breathing?" Ray supplied.

"Yes," Martin said. "Of _course_ that's what I was going to say."

"Professor Stein is correct," Gideon said. "I have slowed Mr. Snart's vital systems so that he can function on the lowest resources necessary until I've finished repairing his injuries. It is even safe, now, to dispose of his bandages."

Kendra nodded and made her way to the sanitizer mounted into the wall. Carter turned to follow her.

"Mr. Hall," Gideon said. "Perhaps it would be best if you cleaned yourself up more thoroughly before you assist any further."

Carter blinked. "Right."

The demigod didn't realize how exhausted the fight had left him. But when he stumbled to his quarters, stripped, and stepped into the shower, it took all of his willpower to stand under the running water until he was clean before he climbed, dripping wet, into bed.


	4. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Len finally recovers enough to tell the team his own version of events... and Carter can't figure out why the thief is lying about what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What if"... my Flash Sideways fanfic was true canon?
> 
> Here we continue the Necropolis arc, in which the team attempted one mission between the first two episodes of Legends of Tomorrow-after Aldus' death and before the stopover in Norway. It is a "what if" scenario primarily based on the timing, as the show doesn't really offer any time between in-canon missions for this event to occur.
> 
> In this chapter I address two potential plot-holes found in canon.  
> One, we learned in season 2 that the Waverider is capable of putting patients in stasis to facilitate their healing, but Professor Boardman was allowed to die in the very first episode of season 1... while it's possible that Chronos had done enough damage that stasis simply wasn't possible under the circumstances (and there is the whole "time wants to happen" argument), I chose to assume the difference was in the nature of the injuries and how well Gideon could separate the critical injury (e.g. the bullet wound in Len's shoulder) from the life-threatening aspect that the stasis was used to get around (the blood loss resulting from said wound).  
> Two, the matter of Carter's mace as a weapon. I have no idea what theory the comics provided, and the TV show rewrites a lot of the canon anyway, but that mace doesn't seem to do a whole lot of damage to normal enemies, either as a blunt object or as a spiked weapon. For my part I chose to assume that Carter's mace is a ceremonial tool with none of the weight of a real mace, and it is only his enhanced strength and whatever else the nth metal meteors did so long ago that allows him to use it as a weapon at all, let alone that he can continue using it as such for a few thousand years... but those spikes can still be dangerous, and of course, there are serious consequences to striking someone hard enough to knock them unconscious no matter the tool used. Also this point is repeated in chapter 5 when Len asks Carter directly about the issue.
> 
> All characters seen or mentioned copyright DC, CW, etc.

When Carter woke, he felt refreshed and completely dry.

_How long have I been asleep?_

The play of lights outside the window told him they were back in the temporal zone. No information there.

A fresh outfit lay folded at the foot of his bed. He dressed and donned his armor—now clean, though he was sure he would have woken if anyone else had entered the room—and left to find answers.

He didn't encounter anyone until he reached the corridor to the Med Bay. Sara stood guard outside.

Carter looked away from the assassin. "Still want to find out if the League can stop me from reincarnating?" he asked. "Who knows? Maybe they came up with something new since the last time I dealt with them."

"I'm still thinking about it," she replied. "Go on in, if you really think you need to."

He gave her a curt nod and approached the door. But voices within made him hesitate.

" _—don't begrudge him his life,_ " Kendra was saying. " _But even if time 'wants to happen,' it hardly seems fair that Gideon couldn't heal Aldus the same way._ "

" _It isn't just time_ ," Rip explained. " _It's also due to the nature of their injuries. In Mr. Snart's case, the most immediate threat to his life is not the damage to his shoulder, but the blood loss that resulted from it. But the damage was what needed healing, obviously. By putting him into stasis, Gideon was able to deal with the two problems as two separate processes, reduce his need for vital resources so she could repair the damage, and_ keep _them separate for as long as necessary._ "

" _Gideon already said something like that_ ," Kendra said. " _But what about Aldus?_ "

" _In Professor Boardman's case, the most immediate threat was the injury itself. True, Gideon_ could _have put him into stasis to prolong his life, but there would have been no way to separate that from the healing process. It would, instead, have prevented her from healing him at all._ " Rip sighed. " _I'm sorry, Ms. Saunders, I know this isn't what you want to hear. And you're absolutely right, it isn't fair; no parent should ever have to bury their child.... not even when reincarnation is involved._ "

" _It does help to know,_ " Kendra admitted. " _A little._ "

" _I'm sorry, but if you could excuse us for a moment..._ " Rip said. " _Mr. Hall, if you could stop eavesdropping, I would like a word with you._ "

Carter's face warmed. "Right. Sorry." When he stepped inside, Kendra pushed past him without a second glance.

Just as well; Carter couldn't meet anyone's eyes right now. His gaze flickered around the room and settled on the unconscious thief in the bed.

Leonard had been cleaned up at some point, and his shoulder was freshly bandaged. And his breathing was finally steady. The blue light had gone out, revealing how pale he still was, but at least now Carter could believe he would survive.

"I'm surprised Rory isn't hovering over him," the demigod murmured.

"Yes, well, he had to be persuaded to shower off first," Rip said. "And Gideon _might_ have sedated him while he was in there."

Carter spun to stare at the captain.

Rip merely shrugged. "It worked well enough on you, I figured it would be at least as effective on Mr. Rory."

"I _thought_ the water smelled odd," Carter muttered. "You didn't try it on Sara?"

"Ms. Lance proved a little more resistant than I anticipated," Rip admitted. "She made me promise not to try anything like that again."

The demigod returned his attention to the thief. "He's all right, then?"

"It's a funny thing about healing," Rip said. "No matter the technique used, no matter how advanced the technology, the process always taxes the patient's resources." He nodded at the screen that displayed Leonard's vital signs. "He needs to recover his strength, but the worst is over. His injuries are completely healed."

"All of them?" Carter echoed. "Even the...." He waved one hand at the back of his own head.

"Gideon was able to repair that, as well," Rip replied. "That is, incidentally, what I wanted to speak to you about. You were the only one in a position to witness what had happened; perhaps you could explain how he'd sustained those injuries?"

"I guess it was too much to hope that you'd wait until he could answer those questions himself?" Carter shook his head. "There was no other way I was getting him off of that pillar."

" _Mr. Hall!_ " Rip snapped. "I understand that you do not approve of the inclusion of two criminals on this team, but for gods' sake—"

"No, you _don't_ understand," Carter growled. He turned to face the captain again. "He'd already been shot when I got to him. He was half dead. The only hope I had of saving him was by flying him back here. But when I _told_ him I was going to do that, he panicked. And you know what scared him the most? Not having to trust someone, not that it was me. No, what scared him more than anything was that his fear would make it worse; he believed that once he was in the air, he wouldn't be able to keep himself under control and he'd put _both_ of us in danger."

Rip blinked. "I... see...."

"Do you?" Carter scoffed. "He might never have been in that position if I hadn't kept pushing him. I'm not proud of that. But when I say there was no other way I was getting him down from there, I'm not being malicious. I'm saying that I didn't believe then, and I don't believe now, that he had time for a better option."

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS—

Carter returned to the main deck a few hours later to find Mick in Rip's office, nursing a beer with four more waiting on the table in front of him.

The demigod snatched a fresh bottle up and took a swig.

"Hey!" the arsonist growled. "Don't wanna work with thieves but you'll steal from my stash?"

"It's one lousy beer," Carter said. He took another sip and grimaced at the flavor. "Emphasis on ' _lousy_ ,'" he added.

"It's _my_ lousy beer," Mick grumbled.

"Here." Carter set the bottle down long enough to find a twenty in his wallet and tossed the bill at Mick. "Start buying a decent brand and get over yourself." And he grabbed the bottle back up, crossed to the other side of the room, and took another drink.

The bottle was half empty when the ship's speakers snapped to life.

"Mr. Snart is awake and moving about," Gideon announced.

"Moving about where?" Mick asked.

"He's made it to the kitchen," Gideon replied. "He said he wanted 'real' food."

Carter snickered.

" _Real_ food?" Mick echoed. "You have that on this bucket of bolts?"

"If you're referring to food that isn't synthetic, then no, not usually," Gideon admitted. "I believe what he meant by it was that he expected to receive the fare common to prisons in your era. Or worse, common to _hospitals_ in your era."

Mick shuddered. "I guess even fake food is 'real' food compared to that."

"Why?" Ray asked. "Come on, everybody loves the green jello."

"Could you _be_ any more of a dweeb?" Sara asked.

Carter shook his head. "He probably could if he tried."

Sara spun around to glare at the demigod. "I'm sorry, I don't remember asking _you_!" she snapped.

"Never mind all that," Rip said. "Is he feeling up to answering a few questions?"

The next ten seconds of silence felt like an eternity.

"He says as long as you do not interfere with his meal," Gideon finally replied.

Mick didn't need any further prompting. He shot out of his seat and down the corridor, with Sara close behind, before Rip had taken three steps.

Carter trailed behind the rest of the team and found a spot where he could listen in without Leonard seeing him. It wouldn't do any good for the team to think the thief was intimidated into lying.

" _Somethin' smells good,_ " Mick announced as he walked into the kitchen. " _Oh, gross! You couldn't have cooked it first?_ "

" _This_ is _cooked!_ " Leonard protested.

" _It's got_ pink _in it!_ " Mick replied.

"So much for not interfering with his meal," Carter muttered.

"Better Rory than you right now," Kendra said.

Carter nodded.

" _That's not exactly standard fare for a recent invalid,_ " Rip said.

" _Why not?_ " Sara asked. " _With how much blood he lost, he needs the iron. Though organ meat would be even better._ "

Mick made a gagging sound.

" _It can also be tougher to chew,_ " Leonard drawled. " _Depending—will you knock that off!—depending on the organ. Or full of fat. Hardly suitable for a... recent invalid._ "

" _Do you feel up to answering some questions?_ " Rip asked.

" _I already told Gideon I would,_ " Leonard replied. " _What did you need to know?_ "

" _How you were injured,_ " Rip said. " _The generalities will suffice for now._ "

Carter listened closely. _I'm damned no matter what he says._ Either the thief would admit to what the demigod had done and out him to the entire team, or would prove that the blow had damaged his memory and set the League assassin against Carter for all time.

" _Pretty sure you already know about the rocket launcher,_ " Leonard replied. " _Damn explosion sent a lot of debris on top of me. I did what I could to protect myself from the fallout, but it left me disoriented. By the time I could see straight, one of the locals had already climbed up the pillar and stole your rifle from me._ "

A pause, followed by chewing too quiet for anyone without Carter's senses to hear.

" _He shot me while I was trying to reload my pistol. Then Carter showed up and tossed the guy off the pillar. He said he'd fly me back to the Waverider, and...._ "

Another pause, but this one was silent.

Carter's heart sank. _No! He has to remember._

When Leonard spoke again, his voice was subdued. " _I'd lost a lot of blood by that point. I passed out before anything else happened._ "

Carter blinked. "That's not..."  he muttered. "No, he was still _awake_."

Mick produced a sound, near to a roar, that made Carter jump. It took the demigod far too long to realize that the arsonist was _laughing_.

" _You sure that was the reason?_ " Mick asked. " _Sure you didn't pass out 'cause he said '_ fly _'?_ "

" _Not helping,_ " Leonard said.

" _Never said I was trying to,_ " Mick replied.

" _Wait, what about the marks on the back of your head?_ " Sara asked.

" _I_ said _there was a lot of debris,_ " Leonard said. " _Throwing my arms over my head doesn't offer_ that _much protection._ "

" _And the way he stood over you with his mace when I got there?_ " Sara said. " _He was ready to attack!_ "

" _His mace,_ " Leonard echoed. " _A weapon designed to crush_ skulls _, if my research is correct. Is that what happened to me?_ "

Except Carter's mace was a ceremonial tool, with only the demigod's own strength to turn it into the weapon it appeared to be. Though if the thief wasn't aware of this fact, it would be easy, logical even, to dismiss that memory as faulty.

Especially if his memory _was_ damaged. The mace may not have the weight of a real weapon, but those spikes weren't for show. And Carter knew from far too many lifetimes that any blow sufficient to render someone unconscious had serious consequences.

" _No, thank god,_ " Rip muttered. " _The gunshot wound on your arm was the only critical injury._ "

" _As to him being ready to attack, well, I really wouldn't be able to answer that, now, would I?_ " Leonard continued. " _But we were still in a fight, weren't we? And the warlord had already climbed up after me; it stands to reason some of his militia could follow. Perhaps Carter thought it was one of them?_ "

" _Gideon, are we_ sure _that his concussion is healed?_ " Sara asked. " _That he didn't suffer some kind of memory loss?_ "

" _Mr. Snart remembers the attack perfectly,_ " Gideon replied in a tone that Carter could best describe as waspish. " _His memory matches the events I extracted from Mr. Hall's mind. This is the story he_ chooses _to present._ "

" _Be a lot more convincing 'story' if you didn't insist on calling it one,_ " Leonard mumbled. " _Was there anything else?_ "

Carter frowned. That Leonard's memory wasn't damaged by the blow to his head was a relief, but if he knew exactly what had happened.... what purpose was there in lying about it?

" _No, Mr. Snart,_ " Rip said. " _That will be all, thank you. I'd like you to report back to the Med Bay in a couple of hours. Sooner if you experience any problems. Enjoy your meal in the meantime._ "

The three filed out, leaving Leonard alone. Sara pointed two fingers at her eyes and then at Carter, Mick glanced at the demigod with a shrug and returned to his beers, and Rip walked by without giving any of them a second look.

The rest of the team wandered off to their own tasks, either satisfied with Leonard's version of events or as yet unwilling to question it.

Carter suspected the second theory was more likely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linked fics:  
> (sort of) Legion of Doom: Len pulls the same stunt with wandering off to the kitchen when he's not supposed to for some fine dining. Except that fic takes place during an alternate version of season 2 and he's a prisoner on the Waverider.


	5. Wibbly Wobbly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Len is oddly forthcoming about what he perceives as his weaknesses. I blame the head injury. (Yes, Gideon, I know you healed it. Shut up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have Carter learning first-hand the extent of Len's recovery and the source of the thief's panic attack. In the process, I resist the urge to call this chapter "It's a Small World After All" due to a random imaginary muse trying to ~~distract me from completing anything~~ suggest other story ideas I might eventually explore in the form of giving the reincarnating demigod and the Robber of ATMs a shared history that neither one is fully aware of.
> 
> Note: Carter's description of Len's panic attack is based, not in the least bit on personal experience, but on what I have read about such attacks in an effort to understand how they are not so out-of-character for someone (i.e. Len) whose very survival all too often depends on not letting on how scared he really is.  
> I assume Lewis wouldn't have been the type to teach Len that it's okay to be afraid but rather would punish him until he learns to hide his fear no matter the source, but it has to come out _somehow_.  
>  As a result, I kinda see Len as normally enjoying things that provide an adrenaline rush (like his comment in Rogue Time about the thrill of the chase) not so much for the rush itself but because those things also provide a convenient outlet for the adrenaline. But of course, that enjoyment requires being able to _use_ the adrenaline; easier said than done if he has to let a winged demigod fly him around while he's busy trying not to bleed to death.
> 
> The timeline-shifted "Majummed" copyright me. Who he is an alternate timeline version _of_ is copyright DC, CW, et al, along with all other characters seen or mentioned.

Carter glanced around, but only Kendra remained behind to watch him. Finally he knocked on the doorframe.

Leonard glanced up. His eyes widened at the sight of the demigod, flicked to the doorway, and back again.

"You mind if I join you in there?" Carter asked. "I've got a few questions of my own. You, uh, don't actually have to answer them—or even listen—if you don't want to."

"Go ahead," Leonard replied.

Carter took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he approached the thief.

He glanced at the steak, snickered at Rip's comment about the meal choice, then looked back at Leonard.

Then he looked at the steak again. " _That's_ what Rory was complaining about?" Carter scoffed. "I have enhanced vision and I can barely see any pink in it! He'd hate to watch _me_ eat."

"Mick will cook to order if you know how to ask," Leonard said, "but he'll complain about it the whole time; sometimes I'd swear he doesn't think it's truly cooked unless you can find ashes in the middle. Gideon apparently doesn't have that problem; I think this is the first time I've had a decent meal in a long time." He ate another small bite, never once taking his eyes off of the demigod. "Why, how do you prefer _your_ steak?"

"Freshly killed," Carter said. "Maybe blue if I have to warm up leftovers." Or so went the rumors; in truth, he hated raw meat, but he could make himself eat it as a way to intimidate someone, which rarely happened, or when cooking wasn't an option, which had happened far more frequently than he liked to think. He picked up a loose chunk of steak, ripped it in half, and swallowed a single piece whole. "But this isn't bad," he added, closing his eyes as he concentrated on licking the juices from his lips. "More like something I'd make when I don't want to nauseate my dining companions."

"Or when you don't want them to think they're on the menu?" Leonard suggested.

"Huh?" Carter opened his eyes again to see the thief staring at him. Or rather, staring at the meat still in his hands.

Leonard shifted his weight away from the table. The motion was too subtle for a normal human to notice, and he probably wasn't even aware of doing it. But to Carter's enhanced senses, the move betrayed not only the thief's desire to bolt but _exactly_ which direction he'd take if he tried.

"Sorry," Carter muttered. "That was... not deliberate." He found clean dishes and diced up the other piece he'd taken. Only after he began eating in a human fashion did Leonard relax enough to finish his own meal. "Is that really what that looked like? I know I can intimidate people by acting the savage animal, but it never occurred to me that anyone might think I was a cannibal."

Leonard shrugged. "Wasn't sure how much your power makes you like a real hawk."

"Hawks aren't known for being man-eaters," Carter pointed out.

"They're not known for being big enough to try, either," Leonard replied.

"Fair point, but no," Carter said. "But speaking of things real hawks aren't big enough to try, I feel like I need to confess.... When Rip first asked us to join him, I had this thought that I might take you or your partner—you, probably, since Rory seems to follow your lead—up about, oh, maybe a mile into the air for a little chat to make sure you wouldn't start any trouble." He watched Leonard closely as he spoke, and couldn't even pretend to be surprised to see the thief's face take on a hint of green. "The only reason I _didn't_ ," he continued, "was because of the information I'd picked up about you, I'd figured you were too smart to start trouble that you couldn't get yourself out of. I _meant_ that part when I said it to Rory. And I didn't want to be the one to start a damn pissing contest."

"Funny," Leonard muttered. "Could've sworn that's _exactly_ what you were doing."

Carter winced. "I deserve that."

"How gracious of his highness to admit it," Leonard replied. "But to be fair, I've started plenty of trouble I couldn't get myself out of."

Carter snorted.

"And now? I assume there's a reason you felt the need to confess."

Carter nodded. "Yeah, there is. Because _now_ I feel like a jackass for even considering something like that." He tilted his head to consider the thief. "Why didn't you tell them the truth? They all know I'm the one who knocked you out."

Leonard fell silent as he concentrated on his meal. "How?" he asked once he'd swallowed the last bite. "How did you do it, I mean? I admit I wasn't thinking about the consequences when you suggested it, but maces aren't exactly known for _love taps_. Seems like using your fist would've been easier."

In response, Carter dropped his mace on the table in front of the thief. "Pick it up."

Leonard wrapped one hand around the handle and lifted the weapon clear off the table. "It's _light_. I'd say, half a pound including the handle?"

Carter nodded. "That one's a ceremonial tool, or four thousand years ago it was. Whatever happened to us changed more than just Kendra and me, and that thing has seen more battles than a real mace could withstand, but dropping it on you was hardly different than lobbing a small rock at your head." He shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, any head injury that can knock someone unconscious is a serious matter, and the spikes could be lethal even before things changed. I was worried Gideon wouldn't be able to fix you after what I did, and I'm glad that she could. But as far as your concussion goes, if I'd really wanted to hurt you, under the circumstances I _would've_ just used my fist."

"But the rest of the team doesn't know that," Leonard replied. "What makes you think they know what you did? Obviously Sara saw enough to incriminate you, but it's also obvious she never saw you land the blow. Did you _tell_ anyone what happened?"

"Well... no...."

Leonard shrugged his uninjured shoulder. "Then they're only guessing."

"A _correct_ guess—"

"Is still a guess," Leonard said. "Besides, after your 'pissing contest' earlier, do you honestly think if I told them what happened, they'd believe for one second that you did it to save my life?" He shook his head. " _Without_ explaining why it was even necessary?"

Carter snickered. "You had me going there for a moment. I was starting to think you were being altruistic, but no.... you lied because you don't want to admit you were _scared_. Because you think it makes you weak."

And yet.... _they'd believe... you did it to save my life?_ Leonard _could_ have let them think the demigod had acted out of malice; Carter's own actions had made that theory all too easy to believe, and Sara clearly still believed it. But for whatever reason, the thief had chosen not to leave things like that.

"You saw how I reacted," Leonard mumbled. "I was having a panic attack about _having a panic attack_! What the hell would you call that?"

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Carter murmured.

" _Pretty_ sure that's not what that quote means."

"I wouldn't call it _weak_ ," Carter insisted. "Fear is a natural response to danger; it's critical to our survival. That's the exact opposite of weakness. But a panic attack like I witnessed...? Snart, that's not about how afraid you were, it's about being unable to process that fear and release it safely, experiencing a fight-or-flight response when neither one was an option. And in your case, I suspect it's because you never learned how to do anything with your fear _except_ hide it until it has no other way to escape." He frowned. "Is that because of your old man? Was that something he did to you?"

Leonard shook his head. "In general, yes, but _that_ one was from one of the Flash's enemies," he admitted. "Another speedster. He wanted me out of the way, so he abducted me from the middle of my crew, and left me stranded in a cable car some thousand feet in the air." He shuddered. "Once I'd been up there long enough to realize I was _completely_ at his mercy, he explained why he'd taken me, and then he cut the line. Only reason I survived is because he pulled me out at the last second to keep the Flash from getting suspicious, but it was long enough for me to remember every second of what _should_ have been a fall to my death."

" _Gods_ ," Carter breathed. "If you had a power like mine, that would've triggered it for sure." Whether he could have used that power from within the car was another problem entirely.

"Yeah, well, all it triggered for me was one panic attack right after another," Leonard said. "I used to enjoy climbing; I liked the adrenaline rush—when I could actually do something with it—and I liked finding hideaways where even my most tenacious enemies couldn't follow. But after that, it took me weeks before I could make myself set foot on a damned third-story balcony. And looking _down_ from any height...." He shuddered again.

"I'm sorry," Carter said. "I should never have pushed you like that." He frowned. "Even being on a time machine, I assume there's no way to stop myself from handling things the way I did... but I want to make it right. I'd like to help you learn to manage that fear, maybe even change it to something you can enjoy again. What do you think? Would you be willing to let me try?"

"I fail to see how _pity_ is 'handling things' any better," Leonard snarled.

Carter snorted. "Your old man really did a number on you if you can't tell the difference between pity and compassion. Makes me wonder how well I really knew him, though; did I miss what he was because he was just that good at hiding it, or because I didn't want to know in the first place?"

"I... what." Leonard blinked. "You... knew him. Lewis. You knew Lewis."

Carter resisted the urge to laugh at the thief's bewildered expression. "Small world," he said with a shrug. "I knew the man he _pretended_ to be. In my previous incarnation, we were... well, not friends, we were business associates on friendly terms. Friendlier than I started with you, anyway. I didn't like him being a thief any more than I like it from you, and there were certain things I'd forbidden him if he wanted me to keep paying him. But I wasn't above commissioning him to find artifacts from my previous lives, no matter where he stole them from. I never got any weapons out of it, nothing I could use to end Savage, but I kept hoping."

"Huh. Is _that_ why he was so obsessed with museums? He kept making me and Lisa memorize the exhibits until I was twelve—silly me, I thought it was because he still gave a damn about our education—but he never said he'd been hired for any of it."

"I paid him good money for his expertise; figures he had _you_ do the real work," Carter muttered. "He shouldn't have told anyone, though... shouldn't have _involved_ anyone for that matter, that was part of our agreement. He delivered the artifacts anonymously, so if I was ever caught with stolen property, I couldn't link him to the thefts, but if he tried to betray me I could honestly claim I'd bought them outright." He leaned back in the chair and stared up at the ceiling. "But then he started getting aggressive, started hurting innocent people. After he murdered someone, I cut him loose. A few years later—" he nodded at the window and the temporal zone rippling outside before he returned his attention to the ceiling "—about a year from _now_ , I'd gone to find him, thinking I'd give him another chance, only for his wife to tell me he was in prison for trying to steal some damn emerald." He smirked. "She was... upset with me, to put it mildly. I had to use a few dirty tricks to keep her from hurting herself or learning what I was really capable of. She didn't start warming back up to me until I offered to pay to take care of her children, but she and her father both always blamed me for the fact that she even needed the help."

Leonard muttered something that even Carter's enhanced senses couldn't decipher. "Lewis chose that life," the thief said. " _Before_ he started working for you, from the sound of it. You didn't choose it for him, you just tried to channel it into a way to make things better."

"See, now _that_ sounds more like a fellow I knew in my first life." Carter looked away from the ceiling and smiled at the thief. "You resemble him, too; maybe one of your ancestors?"

Leonard lifted one eyebrow. "I'm descended from Egyptian _royalty_?"

"Ha! From a royal s—servant," Carter replied. "My personal bodyguard," he added. "Majummed, he called himself."

Leonard narrowed his eyes. "If you start treating me like a... _servant_ —"

Carter winced.

"—we're going to have problems," Leonard finished.

"Fair enough," Carter said. "But that's not what I meant. This man.... If you'd seen him fight, you'd think he was one of the deadliest things on Earth. Hell, I bet he could've given Sara a run for her money. But outside of a fight...." He shrugged. "He wasn't a sociable sort, speaking a different tongue probably had something to do with that, but he treated nearly everyone with compassion. You could never have mistaken it for weakness."

"Hmm...." Leonard tapped a finger against the table a few times. "I think your bedtime stories need work."

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, not the part about hiring Lewis," Leonard said. "That part I believe. But if this mythical bodyguard of yours was so deadly, how did Savage get past him? This _was_ before he killed you and Kendra or became immortal, correct?"

"True," Carter admitted. "But he was also one of the few people Majummed could never get along with. Hath-Set had always been trying to separate my bodyguard from me, and even as the prince, there were rules I had to follow." He dropped his gaze to the table. "There was a negotiation I'd been tasked to oversee... my father said it would insult my hosts if I couldn't rely on their hospitality, and he'd _forbidden_ me from taking any of my servants along. When I returned, I'd learned that Majummed had been accused of conspiring against the high priest, there'd been some foreign spy he'd supposedly helped to escape, and he'd been executed in my absence."

Leonard's mouth dropped open.

Carter's eyes prickled. He reached up to rub the sensation away and was mildly surprised to find them wet. "I knew nothing of Hath-Set's ambitions at the time," he continued, "but I was certain the attack had just been an excuse to eliminate Majummed, that's how much they hated each other. Of course I couldn't _prove_ anything, so I tried to confront my father and Hath-Set's claims and find justice for what I thought was murder." His expression twisted into a snarl. "All I got out of it was a lecture about acting like a child whose favorite _toy_ had been stepped on! My father said the gods themselves had passed their judgement and taken him away, and that was the end of it."

"You cared about him," Leonard murmured.

Carter nodded. "I know he didn't have a choice in the matter—probably never gave a damn about me in the first place—but I'd always thought he was a friend. We'd tried to find him, Chey-Ara and me, the first few times we reincarnated. But it didn't take long to accept that he had no part in what had happened to us."

Though even that wasn't strictly true. He _had_ encountered the man once since then. _Once_. Carter had saved him from a mishap with the League of Assassins in the early fifteenth century, on the day Ra's al Ghul was supposed to announce the return of al Eanqa', the Phoenix. He'd been certain that the man he'd encountered then had been the _same_ man as Khufu's late bodyguard, and not a reincarnation at all, but he'd seemed younger than the demigod had ever remembered him. And while the warrior had recognized his rescuer as Khufu reborn he'd acknowledged no awareness of any shared history with the prince, a lapse that Carter had taken for another side effect of the curse that had inflicted all of them.

The demigod sighed. "If anyone ever accuses me of being unsociable, that's part of it—how many lives I've had, the people I've grown attached to, only to die and be reborn and know that I would never see them again... It never gets easier."

"You keep your distance for fear of getting hurt," Leonard suggested. "Sounds like your ability to retain these past lives is as much of a curse as the fact that you even _have_ them."

"Seems that way, sometimes." Carter shook himself. "I'm sorry, we were supposed to be talking about _you_. I don't know if anyone ever asked, but are you doing all right?"

The thief shrugged his right shoulder and winced. "I'm still a bit sore," he admitted, "and this conversation isn't exactly helping with the headache. I think I ought to check in with the Med Bay sooner rather than later." He pushed himself up from the table, but the demigod beat him to the dirty dishes.

"And the other problem?" Carter persisted. "Your fear? If you'd let me help...."

"I'll think about it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linked fics:  
> Kendra overhears part of this conversation, and makes the connection in Catalyst when Len's fear of heights becomes critical to yet another problem.  
> How Carter met "Majummed" and the nature of the "gods'" involvement will show up somewhere in one of the Majummed stories--maybe the main storyline when I get to it, maybe something between Catalyst and the title story, I won't know how I want to divide things until I get there.  
> The encounter with the other speedster occurs in the Flash Sideways ficlet Enemy of My Enemy.  
> And now I want to write a short story about how Carter saved "Majummed" from the League.
> 
> A note on ages:  
> No idea how much time (if any) must pass between Carter's death in one incarnation and his birth in another in official canon, but _if_ we assume that most of the characters are the same age as their respective actors and _if_ we assume that Carter's soul doesn't ever, shall we say, "bounce back" to an earlier time, then 1985 is the very latest that his previous incarnation could have died... 1984 if we also assume the soul enters the body at conception. Thus Len's comment about Lewis making him memorize the exhibits until he was twelve; Snart the elder focused almost exclusively on museums until the point when Savage caught up to Carter in that lifetime.  
>  And speaking of the actors' ages, my fics assume that most of the characters are, indeed, the same age as their respective actors... except Lisa. Many of my fics have mentioned that I have a much smaller age gap between her and Len than exists between their actors, and have it that Lisa was most likely conceived during a conjugal visit while Lewis was serving time for stealing that emerald. Thus Carter having to offer to pay to take care of the "children" (and not merely the "son") before Mama Snart was ready to forgive him for his role in Lewis' criminal choices.


	6. Rocky Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we return to official canon, and Carter makes one more attempt to persuade Len to accept his help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we finish off the Necropolis ficlet as the team makes its plans to infiltrate the terrorist arms sale.  
> Sara still doesn't trust Carter where Len is involved (and Len isn't too keen on dealing with him either). But Carter is determined to make up for his earlier behavior... at least in relative privacy where the rest of the team won't notice him miraculously being nicer to the thief.
> 
> All characters seen or mentioned copyright DC, CW, et al.

The Waverider set down in a mountain of green.

No doubt the perfect place for whatever "help" a winged demigod could offer.

Leonard suppressed a shiver.

"And we've arrived!" Rip announced. "Gideon, if you wouldn't mind camouflaging us as an alpine meadow, perhaps?"

The team removed their harnesses, and Mick immediately doubled over and cradled his head. The two demigods, seated next to him, watched him closely.

"What are you complaining about now?" Leonard asked. He couldn't remember the arsonist ever really being sick before they'd joined the mission; even his hangovers never seemed to affect him so badly. "It's not like we time-jumped."

"I _hate_ flying," Mick grumbled, "especially in..." He waved his free hand around "...whatever this thing is."

"Where exactly are we?" Carter asked.

"We're still in 1975, right?" Kendra added.

"Indeed!" Rip said. "October 1975 on the fjords of northern Norway."

"Sounds like a vacation," Leonard said. He joined Sara at the central display while the rest of the team faced Rip.

"Which we can take as soon as the threat of Savage has been neutralized, Mr. Snart," Rip said. He paced across the deck to his office and picked up a book.

"That's Aldus' notebook," Carter said.

Rip nodded. "Now, he theorized that Savage _might_ be here," the captain said, flipping open the notebook, "and if he's right, and if we can capture Savage, then at least Professor Boardman didn't die in vain."

"Can't we just go back and _save_ Aldus?" Kendra asked.

"He was our son," Carter added.

"Look," Rip scoffed, "I'm _sorry_."

Leonard sighed as the captain's lecture mode turned itself on in full force.

"We can't go back and _change_ events in which we participated," Rip continued. "Time would fold in on itself, creating a temporal vortex."

"Which sounds way cooler than it is," Ray said.

Leonard quirked an eyebrow at the scientist. _How the hell would he know that?_ The man was an engineer, not a quantum physicist; it wasn't exactly like he had experience with time travel.

He _didn't_ , did he?

"Forgetting physics for a second," Sara said, "shouldn't we figure out what Savage is _doing_ in Norway?"

Rip stepped up to the central console. "According to Gideon, there is a large group of terrorists and fringe groups looking to buy illegal arms."

The display's map changed as the captain approached to provide detailed information on their location.

"Now _that_ sounds like a vacation," Mick said.

"Arms dealers and terrorists aren't exactly our kind of people," Leonard said with a grimace. He leaned down onto the display and smirked at the rest of the team. "But they're the next best thing," he admitted.

"Well, looks like you and your lapdog get to earn your keep," Carter said.

Leonard rolled his eyes at the demigod's persistence. Should he warn Carter that Mick wasn't a dog person, or would it be more amusing to watch the charade play itself out? Just because the man had saved his life didn't give him license to keep insulting them, after all, and Leonard had already overheard the team taking bets on when they'd witness the eventual fallout.

"I'm no one's lapdog, bird-man," Mick replied in a far calmer tone than the insult would have normally provoked.

"So what exactly _does_ one wear to a black market arms bazaar, anyway?" Kendra asked.

"The Waverider has a fabrication room," Rip said, "which can fashion temporally-indigenous, uh... fashion."

"You've got a room that makes _clothing_?" Jefferson asked.

"Doesn't everyone?" Rip said before he walked out the door.

It was a credit to the captain's attitude that Leonard genuinely could not tell whether or not he was being sarcastic.

"Fabricator room, then?" Leonard said.

Gideon sent the directions to the comm in his ear. The thief took off, overtaking the captain easily, and half of the team followed close behind.

"All right," Ray said in his perpetually-cheerful tone, "first thing we need to do is work up a plan."

"Got a lot of experience infiltrating criminal gatherings?" Leonard asked. "Didn't think so. I'm calling the shots."

"Actually, _I'm_ in charge," Rip said. He pushed past them, waving that notebook around as though he held a magic wand. "In case any of you have forgotten."

"No, I remember," Leonard replied, "I just don't care."

Rip stopped short. "Do I need to remind any of you that I'm a Time Master?" he snapped. "Making discrete alterations is what I do, so we're not just gonna charge into the past like a bull into a china shop...."

"Half of what you told us about the mission turned out to be lies," Mick growled.

"None of you have ever encountered Vandal Savage before," Rip said. "I have! And I'm telling you now, you are making a big mistake."

Ray scoffed. "Already did that when we trusted _you_."

"Back soon, Captain," Mick said.

The group continued on towards the fabrication room, leaving Rip standing there to decide for himself whether to follow or stay behind.

—WHAT IF: NECROPOLIS—

Leonard plucked at his sleeve again and tried to force himself to settle. He'd never liked wearing anything quite so... _snug_. It was almost as bad as letting someone touch him; he was much more comfortable in something just loose enough to conceal his size, not to mention conceal whatever tools he might need to bring along.

But he couldn't even complain; he _had_ requested an outfit that wouldn't easily catch on anything, after all. And his plan didn't require concealing his tools. His plan didn't involve tools of any kind, except the regular guns they'd keep in plain sight and the special guns he and Mick would carry under their coats.

He plucked at the sleeve once more before he threw on a leather jacket, the only relatively loose article of clothing in his chosen ensemble.

Ray paused in the middle of putting on his ATOM suit and looked him up and down. "You are, without a doubt, the first person I've met who looks _good_ in that much black," he said before he donned his helmet.

Leonard frowned. "Do I have time to change?" He was rewarded by seeing the scientist pout under his face shield.

" _No_ ," Sara replied. "They'll be back any minute, you are _not_ changing just because Raymond said you look good."

"Oh, please," Leonard scoffed. "You don't honestly think I'm _that_ petty?" Though Mick's snickering ruined the argument. "I just need—"

"The lady gave you an order," Carter said from above. He landed in the middle of the clearing and crouched to let Jefferson slide off his back.

The youth had the biggest grin Leonard had seen on anyone except Barry or Lisa.

"The _correct_ response," the demigod continued, "is hayati lak liqiada."

Something tickled in Leonard's mind. He had no idea what language Carter had just spoken, but the words sounded familiar... somehow. "What does that mean?"

"It's Arabic," Sara replied. "Loosely translated, it means 'My life is yours to command.' Carter, your vocabulary is outdated by a few centuries."

The demigod shrugged. "That's to be expected. As long as I don't have to infiltrate the League, I'm fine with it." He approached Leonard on the edge of the group.

Leonard ignored Sara's bristling, and waited until they were out of earshot before he acknowledged the demigod's proximity. " _Lapdog_?" he muttered.

"You don't expect me to go easy on the two of you?" Carter asked. "Unless of course you _want_ the team to wonder why I decided to start playing nice."

Leonard shook his head. "Sounded like Mick let it slide that time, just don't push your luck. I'm sure you could imagine that neither of us are fond of being controlled, so even _implying_ it doesn't typically go over very well."

Carter nodded. "I'll remember that." He peered at the thief. "Are you doing all right?"

Leonard snorted. "If I say yes, will you stop asking me that?" The soreness had faded from his shoulder several hours ago, though Gideon had cautioned him against overworking it for at least another day. And the AI had all but threatened to confine him to the Med Bay for the next _week_ if she wasn't satisfied with his fluid or iron levels.

But there was no way he was going to tell Carter any of _that_.

"If you say yes," Carter replied, "that means you're ready to let me help."

Or maybe the thief's preferred silence wasn't the best option right now.

"I guess I'm a little nervous about what sort of 'help' you had in mind," Leonard admitted. He couldn't stop himself from looking up at the mountains around them as he spoke.

"I'm not going to throw you off a cliff, if _that's_ what you're worried about."

Given that Leonard was already thinking of that exact possibility, Carter's reassurance wasn't the slightest bit reassuring. "Isn't that how you triggered Kendra's powers?" It had been a high-rise building, according to his sources, much lower to the ground than these mountains, but the basic concept was the same.

" _You_ don't have powers to trigger," Carter pointed out. "And the Flash was there to catch her when it failed. If I tried that with you, I'd want to do it somewhere more open. Higher up. More room to fall, more time to catch you. Doing it in these mountains would just end in a nasty splatter."

" _Carter!_ " Leonard whimpered. He squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn't force that image from his mind. "Stop it.... Please just stop."

_In through the nose.... Hold for three.... Out through the mouth...._

Except he had to cover his mouth against the urge to vomit.

"See, this is exactly what I'm talking about!" Carter growled. "You're on solid ground, but you can't even discuss it as a _hypothetical_ without panicking. You _need_ to let me help you. And if you're not willing to accept compassion as a reason, then at least accept that until you get this fear under control it will only make you a liability to the mission."

Leonard nodded, but he couldn't stop himself from whimpering again.

"I'm sorry, that's not...." Carter sighed. "That all came out wrong. I seem to keep taking things too far with you. I swear I'm trying not to make a habit of that."

Leonard took a few more shaky breaths before he could trust himself to speak without vomiting. "Anybody ever tell you you're a bloodthirsty son of a bitch?" he mumbled, his voice still muffled by the hand he didn't quite dare pull away.

One corner of the demigod's mouth turned up. "Only several times a month." He glanced back at the group. "You, uh, you feel good enough to rejoin the team? You should probably see what we found."

The grin was still plastered across Jefferson's face when the two returned, making him look every inch his youth and younger.

"What are _you_ so happy about?" Leonard grumbled.

"That was amazing!" Jefferson replied. "Too bad you weren't awake when Carter flew you back, there's nothing like it."

"Really, Jax?" Leonard scoffed. "Nothing? Don't you already fly as Firestorm?"

"Not the same thing," Jefferson said. "I mean, yeah, I can do all kinds of moves, but having to trust someone else when you're in the air...? Not the same thing at all."

Leonard barely suppressed another shiver. "I'll take your word for it."

Martin leaned close to the thief. "Now you know how _I_ feel when we merge," he muttered.

Leonard nodded. "Sounds like it," he muttered back. Though he doubted the professor ever had to put up with the type of vivid imagery Carter had so generously offered. "So what did we find out?"

Kendra landed in the middle of the group. "It looks like an aircraft hangar," she said. She pulled out her cell phone and opened up the pictures she'd taken. "There are guards surrounding the whole building. We couldn't get inside."

Jefferson nodded. "Snart, I know your plan was to sneak in as part of their group, but I was thinking, wouldn't it be easier to just go in through the roof? There weren't any guards up there, and no way for them to get there from the outside, either. The access door is locked but I bet you could pick that in no time flat. Ray could go through first to make sure there aren't any guards on the other side, and once we're in we'd have an easy hiding spot to keep watch until Savage shows his face."

Leonard tried to swallow in a mouth that had gone dry. Like any quick plan, there were holes in it, like what they would do if there _were_ guards on the other side of the door. But it was still a decent start, something he might've suggested himself, if only....

"Too risky," Carter said. "The team would be better off letting him do what he knows best— _lying_ his way in there."

"Carter!" Kendra snapped. "I thought you agreed to quit provoking him."

Leonard stared at the demigod. In the context of his behavior before the necropolis, that _could_ have been meant to provoke the thief. But after their recent discussion... had Carter just given him a way out?

Carter caught his look and merely lifted one eyebrow before he returned his attention to the group.

Mick shook his head. "I hate to agree with him, but chicken wing's got a point," he said. "We got three people here who don't fly, and no way to case the inside before we move in. And Len and me aren't ninjas like Sara; if it comes to a fight you're gonna need us on the ground."

And there, of course, was the other hole in the plan.

"And the time it would likely take for us to climb down," Leonard added, "is time Savage could use to escape. Not to mention time we won't be defending ourselves." He glanced at Carter again. "Nor would any of you who tries to help speed things along."

"I was only trying to help," Jefferson muttered. "I thought it could've been safer—"

"And it might be," Leonard replied. He didn't want to discourage the kid from trying, after all. "Try not to take it personally, Jax. Everybody's got to start somewhere, and I've pulled off plenty of heists exactly how you described it." He ignored the snort that came from Martin's direction. "Your plan could even be better than mine. But like Mick said, until we see the inside, there's just no way to be certain; _that's_ the part that makes it risky. So!" He looked around at his crew. "Are we ready to go, then? Do we all know our jobs?"

Heads bobbed all around, and the team gave their gear one last look. Ray shrunk and hid himself in the confines of one of Martin's pockets, and Carter crouched to help Jefferson climb onto his back again.

"I'm telling you, man," Jefferson said, "you're missing out."

"Like I said," Leonard replied, "I'll take your word for it. Take care."

Carter nodded and lifted off to speed back to the hangar.

Kendra hovered in the air, frowning as she looked back and forth between Leonard and Carter.

"Something wrong?" Leonard asked.

Kendra shook her head. "Nothing," she replied. "I just thought... never mind, I'm sure it's nothing."

But even as she followed after Carter, she kept glancing back at Leonard until she was out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kinda wanted to include a potentially snide comment from Stein about not encouraging Jax to think like a thief (that would be the reason for the noise Len ignored), followed by Len reminding him that very often the best people at developing things like security systems are those who know how to break in. But in the end it became a question of where to end the chapter if I _had_ included that conversation, and I chose to leave it out to avoid the over-editing that the scene might have caused.
> 
> Linked fics:  
> Between overhearing part of a conversation between Len and Carter in the previous chapter, and witnessing their interaction in this one, Kendra realizes that something besides "he saved my life" changed their dynamic but she is puzzled as to what it could it be; she finally makes the connection in Catalyst when Len's fear of heights becomes critical to yet another problem.  
> In particular, what she notices here is the look Len gave Carter after the way the demigod had vetoed Jax's suggestion; in my notes her thoughts are described as such: "Leonard, she remembered, had actually looked _grateful_ for Carter's suggestion. Kendra rather doubted it had been for the backhanded compliment."


End file.
